Page 3. Tasman’s achievement

The naming of New Zealand

Abel Tasman called the land he had discovered Staten
Landt, believing it might be linked to a Staten Landt close
to Cape Horn, discovered in 1616 by another Dutch navigator,
Jacob Le Maire. In 1643, Hendrik Brouwer showed that Le
Maire’s Staten Landt was a small island, and not the eastern
edge of an undiscovered continent. Subsequently, Joan Blaeu,
official Dutch cartographer to the Dutch East India Company,
conferred the name Nieuw Zeeland (Nova Zeelandia in Latin) on
the land Tasman had discovered. Zeeland was one of two
maritime provinces in the Netherlands; Australia was already
known to the Dutch as New Holland. ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ stuck.

A subsequent voyage thwarted

In 1643 another voyage was planned, and there was talk of
finding ‘a more persistent successor’ to Abel Tasman and
Franz Visscher. Nevertheless, they were appointed to make the
expedition in 1644, but it was confined to the north coast of
Australia and the south coast of New Guinea. Tasman was
denied the opportunity to build on the achievements of his
great voyage of 1642–43 by exploring further east. The Dutch
never followed up Tasman’s discovery of New Zealand. He had
not found any land which would provide the material profit
the Dutch East India Company had hoped for.

Tasman’s New Zealand was only a ‘ragged line’ on the world
map, which might or might not be the coast of the unknown
southern land. Despite the uncertainty, Tasman’s achievement
was considerable. No European before him had sailed south of
27˚ between the east coast of Australia and the Juan
Fernandez Islands off Chile. He had sailed all the way around
Australia and proved that it was not part of a larger
continent. New Holland became the ‘known’ south land; an
‘unknown’ south land might still stretch east from Tasman’s
‘ragged line’: ‘We trust’, Tasman had written, ‘that this is
the mainland coast of the unknown south land’.1

Tasman and New Zealand

Tasman spent the rest of his life in the East Indies. In
the words of the historian J. C. Beaglehole, ‘New Zealand
played but a small part in Tasman's life, as he played but a
small part in its history’.2 His contribution was
significant, nonetheless. He may have merely set the scene
for Captain Cook’s greater achievement, but discovering
Tasmania and then New Zealand was a notable feat. It was
Tasman who opened the way for the European history of New
Zealand.